


if you're gonna hold my breath

by empressearwig



Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/pseuds/empressearwig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A "Listen, churches are burning down. Otherwise, I'd be hitting on you" might-have-been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you're gonna hold my breath

There are things that have beginnings and endings, clearly defined places where they start and stop. And then there are the things that no one realizes are happening until they are, the ones that are halfway over before you know they've begun.

This is both. This is neither.

*

The first time Donna sees Mike, he has an appointment to brief Josh about the FBI's seizure of a cadre of illegal guns. She meets him in the lobby and she sizes him up with a single look. His suit is too big in the shoulders. His shoes are terrible. But he has a good face, a face that wears the seriousness of his job well, and she instantly likes him.

"Mike?" she asks, approaching him as quietly as one can when wearing three-inch heels on tile floors.

He stands immediately, in the automatic way that says that it's a habit. "Yes. And you are?"

Good manners, too. Donna smiles at him. "I'm Donna Moss, Josh's assistant. If you'll come with me?"

She starts back through the maze of desks and halls to the bullpen, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure that Mike is still with her. She only catches him checking out her legs once, and he doesn't blush, but gives her an almost sheepish smile instead, and if Donna weren't sure before that she liked him, she is now.

And really, Donna can't blame him for looking. She _does_ have spectacular legs. She'd look too.

She drops him off at Josh's door with another smile, and goes back to work.

On his way out, Mike stops by her desk. "It was nice to meet you," he says. "Donna Moss."

"You, too," she says automatically, but with a smile that's genuine. "Need me to show you the way back out?"

"No, I can manage it," he answers, with a smile of his own. "I'll be seeing you."

Donna watches him walk away. She sort of hopes that's true.

*

Mike becomes Josh's primary contact at the FBI and he starts showing up at the White House on a regular basis. Whenever Donna sees him, Mike always flirts with her, but there's never any intention behind it. Sometimes Donna wishes there was.

After Gaza, Mike sends flowers. The card had just eight words, the message _Call me if you need to talk_ , and his name. She never lets herself dial his number, but she keeps the card tucked in the copy of _My Antonia_ beside her bed. It helps to know it's there somehow.

When she leaves D.C. for New Hampshire, she takes _My Antonia_ with her. She doesn't think about why.

*

Donna has only been back in D.C. for a few hours when she runs into Mike. Will sent her back to meet with members of New Hampshire's congressional delegation, and she's on line in Starbucks when someone bumps into her from behind. She stumbles forward on her too-high heels, and then there are hands on her elbows, steadying her on her feet.

"I'm sorry," says a very familiar male voice. "Are you alright?"

She turns, his hands still there, warm on her arms. "Mike?"

He blinks at her, surprise plain on his face. "Donna?"

"What are you doing here?" they both ask at once, and Donna laughs.

"You first," she says.

"I thought you were in New Hampshire," he says. He coughs. "I mean, I heard that somewhere."

"You mean you heard that from Josh," she corrects. She hesitates, not sure how to ask, if she still has the right. "Is he --"

"Josh is fine," he says. "You should call him. I'm sure he'd want to --"

Donna shakes her head. "He wouldn't."

"He would," Mike says, "Donna --"

"Enough about Josh," she says, interrupting him before he can convince her to do what she knows she shouldn't. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," he says. "But you never answered my question."

"Which was?"

"What do you want?" asks the barista and Donna turns around, flustered.

"Just a Venti coffee," she says.

"Make that two," says Mike, and Donna looks back at him, shaking her head. "Please," he says. "It's the least I can do for almost knocking you over."

Donna gives in graciously, and Mike pays the girl at the register. They step to the side to wait for their coffee. "You're going to stay and drink this with me, right?" Mike asks.

He sounds almost nervous, Donna thinks, but that can't be right. She doesn't make Mike nervous. "Of course I am," she says, lifting her coffee from the counter. "Where do you want to sit?"

With an efficiency that Donna admires, Mike finds an empty table and commandeers it, holding her chair out for her before taking the opposite one. "So I hate to sound like a broken record," he starts, "but you still haven't told me why you're here and not in New Hampshire."

"Oh," Donna says. She shrugs. "Will sent me down for meetings on the Hill. I go back tomorrow."

"That's a shame," Mike says.

"Why?"

"Because then you probably don't have time to have dinner with me tonight."

Donna starts. That was not something she'd expected to hear. Any expectation that he'd ever ask had gone out the window years ago. "Are you asking me out on a date?"

Mike nods.

"Oh," she says. " _Oh_."

"It's okay," he says. "You're busy, I --"

"No," she says, tripping over the word in her haste to say it. "I mean, yes. I'd love to have dinner with you."

He looks pleased. "Really?"

"Yes," she repeats. "It'll have to be late, though. I don't know how long my meetings will run."

"Donna," he says, "I've lived in D.C. for a long time. I understand."

"Of course you do."

They sit there, smiling stupid smiles at each other for Donna doesn't know how long. They might have sat there all day if someone hadn't asked to take the empty chair at their table, startling both of them out of their stupors.

Donna looks down at her watch. "I'm going to be late," she says, tipping her chair back in her hurry to stand. "Will's going to kill me."

"Go," Mike says, stooping down to pick up the chair. "I'll call you later."

Donna goes, but not without a look back. Stranger things, she thinks, and then she rushes off to her meeting.

If she smiles too much at inappropriate moments, well, no one asks why.

*

They go to dinner. They go back to Donna's hotel room. Donna goes back to New Hampshire.

The next time she comes back to D.C., they do it all over again.

*

"What is this?" Mike asks after the third time, when they're tangled together in the sheets of her hotel room bed. He strokes his hand down her bare arm and kisses her shoulder. "I'm not saying I have any problem with whatever it is, mind you, I'd just like to know."

Donna raises her head from the pillow, and the sheet dips lower on her chest. She makes no effort to pull it back up. "What do you want it to be?" she counters.

"That's not fair," he accuses her, tugging the sheet back up himself. He threads his fingers through her hair, bending to kiss her. "I don't know what I want this to be. But I'd like to think about it. I'd like you to think about it." He kisses her again. "Okay?"

"Okay," Donna says, and she sinks into the kiss, into him.

*

She goes back to New Hampshire and she thinks.

When she goes back to D.C. she still doesn't have any answers.

*

"I don't know," she tells him over dinner. It's a dinner that he's cooked her himself and somehow that makes it all the worse. He's a good man. The kind of man that she's always wanted, the kind of man that's always seemed just beyond her grasp.

And here he is, sitting across the table from her with a glass of red wine in his hand, and she can't take the next step.

He deserves the next step. _She_ deserves the next step.

"It's okay," Mike tries to say, but she shakes her head, doesn't let him finish.

"It's not."

He doesn't contradict her.

They stare at each other, and she remembers that morning in Starbucks when they smiled such ridiculous smiles at each other. It had seemed so possible then. Nothing seems possible now.

"I should go," she says, rising to her feet. She brushes past him as she heads for the door, and Mike catches her wrist in his hand.

He stands. She looks at him. He touches her cheek.

She kisses him goodbye.

*

A week later, and there are flowers waiting for her at the Manchester Holiday Inn. Will tries to look over her shoulder as she reads the card, but she blocks him with her hand.

 _I'm still here if you need me_ , it says. It's not signed. It doesn't need to be.

"Who are they from?" Will asks.

Donna smiles, a little sadly. "A friend."


End file.
